Treating people as objects, agents, or ''subjects'': How young children with and without autism make requests

A procedure previously used to investigate imperative communication in nonhuman primates was applied to young children, some of whom had autism. The goal was to examine closely how requests are made in a problem-solving situation. Each child's spontaneous strategies to obtain an out-of-reach object were analyzed in terms of the ways in which he or she used the adult who was present. Results showed that fewer children with autism used a strategy of treating the person as a ''subject'', and that more children with autism used object-centred strategies.